Tag: atozchallenge

There’s a few passing references to the Wilderlands in the trilogy, though I don’t go into too much detail. Sometimes Sheila will call Nick a Wilderlander…in other words, calling him a hick. Other times someone will mention that their family used to go on vacations out that way. But what is the Wilderlands?

When I was writing True Faith, I knew that this story would take place in a big sprawling city. I briefly expanded on that in the worldbuilding phase, thinking of how the east coast of North America would have evolved over a good five or six hundred years. In my world, many of the cities expanded, encompassing nearby communities or creating new ones to become megacity sprawls. Sort of like Los Angeles or New York City and their surrounding boroughs. This happens with smaller cities as well, including Boston, Phoenix, San Francisco, and so on; their surrounding cities and towns just became part of the bigger province.

Which left all the small towns in between. I called these “outpost” towns, basically stopovers between the larger provinces. Rural living never went away, it just became a little more compact. Many of the supertiny villages are still out there, of course…they’re just part of the nearby outpost towns now. In essence, not much has changed too much in terms of livability. Some choose to live in the outpost towns, such as those doing agricultural work, or have specialized jobs that require a bit of distance from civilization for safety’s sake. And as mentioned above, most of these towns have a brisk tourism business as well.

Originally in TF, the Wilderlands were thought of as the back of the beyond that no one ever traveled to if they could help it; it was pretty much considered where the outcasts and the criminals hid out. This changed during TPE, having decided to show it as Earth’s homage of sorts to the wilderness of Trisanda instead. It’s been that way ever since.

There is of course a bit of New England tied to the idea as well. Having lived in a small town in central Massachusetts for most of my life, I wanted to include a rural setting in this universe that honestly portrayed what small town life looked like. It doesn’t show up in the Bridgetown Trilogy, but it will show up in future stories, including the new one I’m working on.

You’ve heard me go on about the various versions of the Mendaihu Universe stories, and how long it’s been since I began it. And since I have no characters or information that starts with V, I figure I’d post a bit of a timeline of writing the trilogy and its numerous versions, iterations and so on. I know some of you have read this somewhere before (either my LJ or elsewhere), so I won’t go into too much detail!

1993, October: Doing laundry, reading Ray Bradbury’s Zen and the Art of Writing for inspiration, and trying to make sense of my stagnated writing career. Contemplating writing/drawing a comic zine, writing a novel, or a screenplay. The Infamous War Novel still burbling away in the back of my brain. Having watched the first two Gall Force anime OVAs recently, I decide that maybe writing science fiction is the way to go.

1993, 26 November:Vigil is started. My first attempt at writing SF is promising, and yet doesn’t get too far. Possibly focusing too much on trying to maintain the mood and my prose is sadly nowhere near what’s unfolding in my head. Spend a few months working more on the worldbuilding, timelines and possible plot ideas in between my Day Job (register jockey/shipping clerk for Harvard Coop, Longwood branch). Also noodling around with a non-genre story, Two Thousand, which is my attempt at writing a coming-of-age novel. Listening to a lot of music, barely getting by on meager paycheck.

1994, July: Still noodling around with various ideas. Still juggling writing and Day Job (Brigham’s Ice Cream; I can still make you a killer milkshakefrappe if you ask nicely). Hanging out over at my girlfriend’s apartment on South Russell more than my own because it’s got AC and it’s across the street from my job. She and I have been semi-seriously playing around with various ideas growing out of Vigil. One hot and muggy evening I take an as-yet-unused idea of a character popping back in from an alternate reality and decide to use that as an opening. This sparks more conversation about where the story should go, and True Faith is born.

1995, summer: Girlfriend is spending the season back at home with family. I’m now living in an apartment out in Allston, still juggling my writing and my Day Job (various positions at a Sony Theater). Start playing around with an extensive worldbuilding idea connected by multiple novels; the Eden Cycle is born. Decide that during my copious free time and lack of funds I will use my gf’s computer (Windows 3.1!) and transcribe all my writing thus far, in addition to writing new words for TF. Due to various unfortunate circumstances, I move back home with parents at the end of the summer.

1996, April: Somehow despite my sad state of finances, I manage to get a tax return. I decide to spend it (and a few extra funds from family) to buy myself a used PC. It runs on Windows 3.1 and has a monochrome CRT monitor, but that’s all I need. I continue with the transcription project while juggling day job (local radio station!). By the end of the summer I move the PC from my bedroom down to my parents’ basement, which becomes my writing nook for the next nine years. Make various attempts at practice words at least a few times a week to get myself used to daily writing.

1997, 9 March: No longer speaking to now-ex-gf, True Faith having stalled due to same (and having run out of decent plot ideas anyway), decide to start over from scratch. Some elements of Vigil and True Faith — and very small dregs of the Infamous War Novel — are saved, reimagined and completely repurposed into a new story. Make a decision to get to Day Job (HMV Records) an hour early to hang out in the mall food court to write longhand. Writing finally turns into a daily habit that never goes away. The Phoenix Effect is born, with nearly all new characters, the Vigil team now hiding in the periphery.

1998, August: Now writing during the daytime and transcribing the new words at night when I get home. TPE is finished by month end. Begin my first attempts at submitting to various publishing houses, with no luck whatsoever. That doesn’t bring me down, though…I decide the best thing to do is to keep writing. Numerous false starts on a sequel longhand while working on more TPE revision. New novel beginnings, major worldbuilding changes.

2000, summer: So much revision, so little to show for it. Feeling frustrated, I decide that a major rewrite of TPE is in order. I’ve come to the conclusion that the prose is extremely weak and thin, that I hadn’t expanded that much from the longhand original. Instead I decide to completely rewrite the story, expanding on every single scene and discarding a hell of a lot of chaff. A Division of Souls begins.

2001, April: A switch in shift at Day Job (Yankee Candle) now gives me a truckload of time to work on writing. Now dedicating two solid hours to new words on a daily basis. Major expansion on worldbuilding, new characters, and planning out second and third book in trilogy. My Day Job has a bit of slow time here and there, enough for me to brainstorm a few scenes or chapters ahead on scrap paper so I’m well prepared by the time I head home to write it.

2002, Summer: Finishing up ADoS first draft and starting on a bit of revision to include a recently created conlang for the universe, Anjshé.

2002, November 11: Begin sequel, The Persistence of Memories, and finish the first draft exactly one year later. The Balance of Light started a day or so later with its original name, The Process of Belief. It starts off well…

2003, summer: Worried…TBoL has stalled and I’m starting to lose track of where I want to go with it. Day Job (still YC) starting to lose its luster due to management and work shakeups. Still, I soldier on. Start in on Love Like Blood just to keep myself busy. Work on TBoL is in fits and starts at this point.

2005, March: Move down to New Jersey, and my writing habits start wavering due to a lot of (quite positive!) personal events. Day Jobs include office temp work, a significant change from years of physical work. At this point I think I may have lost the plot, literally. Can’t quite figure out how to finish up the story.

2005, December: Another big move, this time out to San Francisco! First apartment on Stockton Street, with my desk facing one of the bay windows. A few years of dithering between projects like LLB and other ideas, while keeping the trilogy in the back of my mind.

2008 into 2009: I decide to share what I have of the trilogy on a friends-locked blog, partly to share it with a few beta readers and also to give it another serious read-through after far too long. By the time I finish the posts in late 2009, we move to our current place and I know exactly how to finish it. I return to my old YC habit of plotting out a few chapters/scenes ahead of time and working on them. At this point it feels like forever since I’ve written anything of import, so I’m quite excited!

2010, January 14:The Balance of Light and thus the trilogy is finally FINISHED! Yay!

2010 – 2015: A few years of other projects, but many, many months of reading, rereading rerereading, rererereading, etc, the entire trilogy, to become so familiar with the entire story again. Much revision, rewriting, adding new scenes, getting rid of some old ones, editing, getting some beta reading commentary. A hell of a lot of background work. My writing style and quality finally seems to be going in the right direction again.

2015, summer: Thinking it might be a good idea to self-publish the series. I’d done a lot of research on it, weighed the pros and cons, and felt it would be the right step to take. Immediately started an intensive revision/edit of ADoS with the aim of release on 3 September — the date the first scene of the book takes place.

2016, April 15: The Persistence of Memories self-published!

2016, April 26: …I spend far too long typing this up for a silly but fun blog challenge, but prove to myself once again that it was so worth sticking with the project after all these years. 🙂

A: Nehalé Usarai [neh-HAH-ley ooh-SAH-rye] one of the few non-Vigil characters that survived nearly every single iteration of these stories, all the way back to the late 1993 original. His name and background evolved numerous times over the years, but his role in the entire story remained the same for the most part: a catalyst. In Vigil he was to be a violent anarchist; in True Faith he was an Edward Snowden-esque whistleblower. He was a not-so-violent anarchist in The Phoenix Effect. And finally in the Bridgetown Trilogy, he became the spiritual leader we all know and love.

Q: How is he connected to the Mendaihu Universe?

A: Aside from the obvious connection in the very first chapter of A Division of Souls, he feels he has the role of Reluctant Shepherd. He’s conflicted; on the one hand he fully believes it’s his responsibility to help usher the newly awakened Mendaihu and Shenaihu towards their own enlightenment…but on the other hand, he doesn’t want them to become blind, passive followers either. Because of this, he likes to work behind the scenes. He continues to be a catalyst in this respect, preferring to inspire and instigate changes instead of performing or enforcing them.

Q: He’s an exceptionally strong Mendaihu, given his actions. What’s that background?

A: I go into it very briefly in ADoS; in his youth he was chosen by Mendaihu Elders to have accelerated training, due to his naturally high spiritual strength. For a time these Elders would bring the young initiates to a small outpost village west of Bridgetown, where they’d go through various exercises and projects to show how well they could utilize their abilities. Nehalé not only showed promise, he surpassed all expectations and became one of the youngest awakened Mendaihu of his time. He chose not to be an Elder, however, instead being a mentor for others who are in the process of awakening. This is how he met Anando Shalei, and why the two men remain close friends.

Q: Is he based on anyone in particular?

A: Not really, and I think he’d rather like it that way! His early incarnations had him more talkative and abrasive; I think I may have seen him being played by Denis Leary, who was big box office at the time. The TPE and Trilogy incarnations are more laid back, more pensive and reserved. In fact, Nehalé is one of the few characters that I’ve never been able to completely visualize. I’ve always seen him as a typically tall Meraladian, somewhat gawky; strong but definitely a beanpole sort of guy. He’s not one to focus on his physical image all that much, so he’d be one of those guys you’d lose in the crowd. The only reason he doesn’t is that so many others in Bridgetown know him by spirit signature.

Q: Anything else?

A: The ‘i’ at the end of his name denotes that he’s a distant cousin of the Usara clan. Even the strongest Mendaihu have day jobs; Nehalé, up until the beginning of ADoS, worked for DuaLife as a Re-Gen (reconstructive genetics) Therapist. He’s a philanthropist who likes to give to local shelters, churches and community centers. He can be quite stubborn at times, often to his own detriment. He’s performed quite a few awakening rituals before the one at the beginning of ADoS, but none as strong or as wide-ranging as that, and he’s not even sure if he has the ability to ever do it again…in fact, he feels he may have caused irreparable damage to his spiritual strength after pulling that off.

My original idea of Trisanda (trih-SAHN-dah) was that it was a forest planet. Inhabited but not even close to Earth’s population at this time. There’s evidence of civilization, of course: there are buildings, halls, chapels, houses, and so on. Most of them are settlements of maybe no more than ten to twenty thousand people spread out over a good number of miles. You could very well argue that my first thoughts of Trisanda was that it was an entire planet that looked like New England!

It’s more built up than that, of course. There are cities as well as villages, forest lands as well as tropical ones, and so on. In a way, think of it geologically as a possible Earth if we hadn’t evolved into a messy, dirty and somewhat irresponsible Industrial Age. Trisanda is what Earth would be if we’d kept nature quite high up there in importance when it came to our cultural, communal and productive evolution. [Not to say I was going to turn it into a political diatribe on ecology, far from it. I admit to not being entirely well-read on that, and didn’t want to go in that direction anyway.]

We make multiple visits to Trisanda during the Bridgetown Trilogy, but for the most part we stay near a community called Bann Dassah (bahn DAH-sah). That’s an extremely important spiritual center for the Trisandi, including a great meeting hall*, a Landing Field**, a Meeting Table near that***, and a wide path that leads toward the center of the community. Bann Dassah, just like all the other communities, also has a spiritual leader of sorts, who acts both as a seer and as a teacher; her name is sehndayen-ne emha Eprysia Kaalen [ey-PREE-see-ah KAY-lenn], often known to many as Ampryss (a conjunction of ’emha Eprysia’).**** She too pops up from time to time in the trilogy.

As this planet is extremely spiritual in nature, a visitor is able to sense a marked difference in the spiritual energy around them, even if their ability isn’t the strongest. It too works on a similar yin-yang balance; this world is the starting point of the Mendaihu-Shenaihu balance, as well as its imbalance. It too reacts with equal force to whatever might be done to it or is taken away from it. Many consider Trisanda and Gharra (Earth, that is) two planets with a related spiritual balance as well. Therefore it’s considered an extremely holy land and its visitors give it the most utmost respect.

* – The meeting hall is mentioned many times in the books, but I never quite made it there. It may show up in future MU stories, however. We do visit a massive living quarters nearby in The Persistence of Memories, however.

** – Landing Fields are dedicated clearings where Lightwalkers can arrive safely on Trisanda. Each field is partitioned into circular segments with shorter grass, with the sigils of the various Trisandi clans set into them with darker wheat-colored stalks. You’ll see these quite often in the trilogy.

*** – Meeting Tables take various shapes, depending on how each community has them set up. Bann Dassah’s is a long, continuous table that takes up most of the field. Feasts are prepared twice a day, every day, regardless of weather.

Yes, Andrew WK! When I picked the Bridgetown Trilogy back up in 2010 and started rewriting and revising it, it occurred to me that my original physical description of the character wasn’t quite working. I’d originally envisioned Saisshalé as a cross between a beefcakey dude, a bouncer, and that crazy guy you cross the street to avoid. That didn’t quite jive with his true nature, though, so I started thinking about it a bit more. A short time later, I’m listening to one of my older mixes and “Party Hard” comes on, and it dawns on me: AWK is actually a SPOT-ON physical match! So I ran with it, and come to find out, the more I saw him playing the role, the better my revision of the character started to be. So it all worked out just fine.

And no, he’s not the villain. He’s merely the spiritual opposite of the One of All Sacred. He gets a few unnamed cameos in A Division of Souls, but he’s in quite a few scenes in both The Persistence of Memories and The Balance of Light.

[As an aside: it really is hard to find a serious picture of Andrew WK online that doesn’t involve him partying hard, making faces or jamming with his pizza guitar!]

Q: What’s the origin of Saisshalé?

A: Saisshalé [say-SHAH-ley], as mentioned above, is the spiritual opposite of the One of All Sacred. I came up with him around late 2001 when I needed to have someone just as strong spiritually as Denni was. He was to be her equal across the board: whatever action Denni took, he would respond with equal force. This presents a serious conflict between the two, because they’re both refusing to back down from what they believe is the right thing to do.

He originally had a much longer, more tongue-twisty name, but during the 2010 reboot I chose to change it. I wanted to hint at a kiralla background, so I chose to go with the very sibilant sounds, and referred to my Anjshé glossary. It comes from the words sa’im (sah’EEM, a qualifier used to add grandeur or excitement) and D’haff Sshalé (djaff SHAH-ley, lit. ‘dark-minded reptile’ but usually refers to someone stubborn and/or cruel). In short, sa’im + Sshalé = Saisshalé. In a way, his name translates to ‘Grand Reptile’, a rather cocky reference to his spiritual history.

Q: What is his history? He’s kind of a weird character.

A: He is that, but I love writing him, because he’s a let’s see how far I can take this kind of guy. I go into more detail in TPoM, but the short version: he was known as a vengeance deity during Trisanda’s very early spacefaring years: he was known as a brilliant tactician who was able to plan out and execute incredibly complex war plans. He ascended to deity status similar to Denni, actually. However, just like Denni, he hasn’t completely ascended yet.

Q: Why is he feared?

A: Basically because he projects the personality of a sociopath. He can be extremely friendly, but his actions can very frequently be seen as amoral. He often claims that he only acts this way ‘because he must’. [And here’s the rub: if you actually sat down and analyzed his actions with what incited them, especially with comparing his actions to the One of All Sacred’s, he’s 100% correct in saying that.] That’s not to say he’ll tear off your head for no reason; he would never do such a thing, and would be offended by such an accusation. In short: he’s a pure Shenaihu, driven completely by spirit and reason, even if that reason goes against expected social mores.

Q: Anything else?

A: Saisshalé is quite tall, about the same height as Governor Rieflin. His connection to the One of All Sacred goes a bit deeper than anyone knows or expects…and we’ll see more about that in The Balance of Light. His voice is low in range, but not quite bass; when he speaks, he uses both vocal and innerspeak at the same time, so his words hit you especially close. He also uses both his muscles and Lightwork for his physical actions, so he comes off as frighteningly strong. Despite his reputation, he can actually be quite friendly and chatty. And absolutely no one knows what he does during his down time, not even me.

A: Provincial Governor Anton Rieflin originally started out in The Phoenix Effect as more of an obstacle for Caren and Alec, as he’d originally been slated to be the token ‘guy in charge who obviously doesn’t know what’s really going on.’ That kind of character frustrated me, however, because it could be so predictable. His character expanded significantly when I started A Division of Souls, when I decided he’d be a lot smarter than he let on. I also gave him his own subplot, having to deal with the frustrations of city politics while something completely non-political was affecting his city.

Q: How is he connected to the Mendaihu Universe?

A: As soon as Nehalé Usarai’s mas awakening ritual calmed down, I started to think: the governor’s not going to like this. This kind of ties in with things I notice with this kind of story: something huge happens that affects thousands of people…and either the government is nonexistent, or they’re the stubborn wrench in the works that keeps our heroes from getting things done. I chose to play it a little more realistically: the government is well aware of what just happened and want to do something about it. Rieflin’s conflict is that his councilors have stalemated: half want to follow the Mendaihu request of remaining hands-off for now, but the other half want to get involved and stop it by force if they have to.
As far as he knows, he’s neither Mendaihu nor Shenaihu, so he has the added conflict of not exactly understanding what’s going on in the spiritual realm…but he’s open minded and willing to learn.

Q: Is he based on anyone in particular?

A: No, just someone who makes an impression on you partly because of his size (he’s quite tall at nearly seven feet, and is often mistaken for being Meraladian, which he’s not), and partly because of his personality. He honestly does have the best of intentions, and is well aware of the intentions of the citizens he governs. He’s just an all around nice guy, even despite what the naysayers and the cynics say. His name is a Tuckerization of two drummers: Anton Fig (David Letterman’s house band) and Bill Rieflin (Ministry, KMFDM, etc). In my head, his last name is pronounced RYE-flinn.

Q: Even though he’s the province’s leader, he defers quite often to Nandahya Mirades, his Meraladian second in command. Is that regular protocol?

A: Yes, it is. The Provincial Governor’s Council is set up with a certain amount of balance: each councilor represents a specific department, and there is also a corresponding councilor for a related department. For instance, we have Commissioner Allen Tatreaux of the Alien Relations Unit balancing out General Stephen Phillips of the Special Forces Guard. Nandahya Mirades [Nahn-DAH-yah MEE-rah-dees] is considered Rieflin’s balance, so whenever a deciding vote is needed from the leader, it must come from both of them.

Q: Anything else?

A: As Provincial Governor, he has living quarters in the Mirades Tower, not far from his offices, but he also owns a house on Sachers Island. He’s single and has no children at this time, but his parents and siblings live across the river in the suburbs. He’s a very intelligent and curious person; he holds degrees in business, political theory and history, all acquired at Bridgetown University. He’s well aware that some citizens view him as a puppet and/or an idiot, and he likes to use that to his advantage…that way he will often surprise them by doing exactly the right thing at the right time. He likes to be able to trust those he works with, without needing to constantly monitor them or question their motives. He has a very low tolerance level for bullshit and will call people on it without holding back. He has a very high appreciation for art, and isn’t so bad an artist himself. Among the few paintings he has hung in his Tower office, he also has a framed painting he did himself, of Bridgetown as seen from the Crest at Breed’s Hill.

It took me a bit to think about this particular entry. I wanted to do it justice, and I definitely didn’t want to make it sound like I was saying Hey, I have [certain kind of person] in my books! Ain’t I progressive? Where’s my gold star?

I try to give my characters some kind of depth when I’m creating them. Some of them pan out, some of them don’t*, but most of the time I’d like to think I give them some kind of unique personality. Someone I’d run into on a random day, have a conversation with, get to know as a coworker, and so on. I’m fascinated by the quirks and habits of people, their strengths and their weaknesses, and how they use those bits of their personality throughout their life.

I didn’t set out to include any token characters when I started writing A Division of Souls. In fact, I was doing my best NOT to do that. Almost from the beginning my game plan was “Nah, that’s a trope/stereotype, it’s an easy out. How do I take that one extra step to make it different?” It’s kind of funny, really; each time I did try to write a stereotypical character, I completely failed at it. I’d get a ways down the road in the story and get completely bored by this flat-minded idiot I’d created. It’s the nonconformist in me, I guess…heh.

Anyway, when it came time to write the Bridgetown Trilogy, I wanted to create the most realistic characters I could, so I decided to pick up on various personality traits of people around me. I was working at the candle warehouse by the time I started A Division of Souls, and it was quite the large warehouse, so I met and worked with a LOT of people of different stripes. No character is based on a specific person from that time; it was just various traits I borrowed from quite a few people.

Did I plan on Caren and Sheila having a short romantic relationship? I don’t believe I did…it was just a background thing that I’d come up with when I wrote the Questioning Room scenes in ADoS. Caren was there to calm her friend down, and I knew they had a long and very close friendship, but it wasn’t until I wrote that scene that it just seemed right; it felt right to have them be very close physically and emotionally just then. I thought about it for a few moments: what were their sexual preferences? Sheila’s loud and free-spirited, and would probably be open-minded on that subject, so I felt she should at least be bisexual. As for Caren…she’s more tense, more reserved, but she’s also quite open and honest with her emotions, so she might not have been truly bi, maybe just curious. They never show any romantic feelings towards each other in public, but the reader can tell there’s still a deep connection there, even after the relationship is over.

As for Saone and Kryssyna…that was a little more deliberate. I wanted Saone to be someone who did not fit in at all. She’s intelligent, but not as smart as her sisters. She’s Shenaihu, but she doesn’t measure up to her father’s high expectations. She’s resourceful, but no one bothers to ask her for help. She has all this great potential, but it seems everyone she’s supposed to impress won’t give her the time of day. The only person who sees her for who she really is, is Kryssyna. But why? Because Kryss is honest, both with herself and with others. She’s an ARU agent who has no time for judging others by their status. She sees past Saone’s rank and place, and sees that potential. This relationship, then, was going to be less about any sexual attraction than it was a personal one. Kryss loves Saone for her drive and determination, especially when it’s to do the right thing. And Saone loves Kryss because she’s always there to take care of her; she inspires her to keep going. I knew then that was going to be a very strong, very long-lasting relationship.

I have no idea how other writers decide how to build their characters, to tell the truth. I just know how I do it to my satisfaction. There are a few other LGBTQ characters in the Trilogy, because it just made sense to put them there. I won’t set out to write a specific type most of the time, I’ll just choose one at random and roll with it. I’ll admit there is a bit of self-conscious selection: I may deliberately want to have a character be gay or lesbian, but I’m not going to shoehorn that trait in if it’s not true to the character. Nearly all the characters in the Bridgetown Trilogy came to me at the inception of the scene, really. I just choose to keep a very long and extremely varied list of possible traits to choose from and go with what seems to fit. And that seems to work out just fine.

* – My trunked novel Love Like Blood was a good example of flat characters. I had some neat ideas in that story, but it was my attempt at completely commercial fiction. Most of the characters ended up all flash and no depth. It was definitely not one of my best works.

A: Alec arrived the same day as Caren, on that very first day I started writing The Phoenix Effect. I always make sure he and Caren are always standing on equal ground in whatever they do. I based their work relationship a bit on Mulder and Scully from The X-Files, but more of it came from Kusanagi and Batou from Ghost in the Shell, as well as Deunan and Briareos from Appleseed. They work extremely well together and are very close, and yet their personalities are quite different.
As for his name, I wanted one that sounded slightly out of fashion from everyone else’s. He’s almost always referred to as “Poe” by Caren and his fellow agents.

Q: He’s got a Mendaihu name as well. What’s that origin?

A: Alix Eiyashné [ey-YASH-ney] is not just a Mendaihu name, it’s his given birth name. Alec was given up for adoption almost immediately after he was born. His adoptive parents, Angela and Daniel Poe, are both academics and gave him a very robust education growing up. He chose not to follow up with his birth parents and never met them, though his adoptive parents did keep in loose touch with them, if just to trade information on health issues and whatnot. He finds out more about them, and himself, in The Persistence of Memories, much of it quite unexpected.
He very rarely uses his Mendaihu name, for very personal reasons.

Q: That’s Kiefer Sutherland in that picture. Is Alec based on him?

A: Almost from the start, I envisioned him playing the role. Strong but soft-spoken, good-looking but weathered by life. Out of all the characters, Alec is the one that’s changed the least physically throughout the various drafts. Whenever I wrote a scene with him, I pictured Sutherland acting it out so I’d be able to get the mannerisms down correctly.

Q: He certainly does seem to smoke a lot, doesn’t he? People still smoke in the far future?

A: I’ll totally cop to the fact that I wrote most of Poe’s scenes for the first two books while I was a smoker back in the late 90s-early 00s. I needed to give him a nervous twitch, and that was the first thing that came to mind. He’s extremely aware of his habit and how it may bother some characters, so he’ll only light up if others around him don’t mind. Caren isn’t the biggest fan of it, but she lets him do it anyway because it’s a release for him.

And yes, that’s a very good question! You don’t see smokers as much as you did fifteen or so years ago, thanks to state laws forbidding it in certain public places, but back when I first wrote many of these scenes, it was rarely frowned upon. It’s a habit/pastime that has evolved over the centuries but never quite went away. Even now, vaping already has fans and detractors. I chose to keep it in the Mendaihu Universe, having it still a thing. It’s still not that healthy, but it’s not a taboo either. It just is.

Q: He has a unique relationship with Akaina Shalei, the Mendaihu agent. What’s with that?

A: This was a relationship that took me some time to figure out. At first I was worried that I was forcing a match on him (after all, I’d put Caren and Anando together not that long before), but there was something about his first meeting with her that stuck with me, so I chose to play it out. He’s quite the moody guy, and I wanted someone other than Caren to give him some kind of mental/spiritual stability and balance. Kai is full of patience and positivity, and she immediately noticed Poe’s startling lack of it. She willingly opened herself to him almost from the start, and he wasn’t used to that, at least not outside his immediate friends, which intrigued him and attracted him to her. In the process, Kai learns calm her sometimes overexcitable spirit by learning to slow herself down when he’s around. Poe changes the most in the trilogy, mainly because of Kai.

Q: Anything else?

A: He still lives in the same apartment that he grew up in with his adoptive family; he bought it from them when they moved north to New Boston Province. His demeanor can be off-putting sometimes, especially when he’s distracted by his thoughts. [His habit of not finishing a sentence is totally me, which drives my wife nuts!] Like Christine Gorecki, he feels more comfortable being on the periphery than being the center of attention. He’s a voracious reader, thanks to his adoptive parents. He has an older brother in that family, David; he also had a blood-relation sister from his birth family but she died during the last Embodiment. He’s quite the cook at home, when he has the time for it. He might be a smokestack, but he rarely touches alcohol. He loves both Caren and Denni like family, and will do anything for them. Despite his gruff outer shell, he’s a big ol’ softy.

Writing a character trope such as a Chosen One can be tricky, because there are so many ways you can fall into the trap of being predictable. Too often they end up as the reluctant hero (Neo in The Matrix, Katniss in The Hunger Games) or the easily distracted and imperfect person who needs to learn how to ascend in status (Daniel in The Karate Kid, Karou in Daughter of Smoke and Bone). But they sell, and readers love them, so I won’t say it’s necessarily a bad thing.

With Denni Johnson, I wanted her to be all of that — a reluctant hero, easily distracted and imperfect. But I also wanted her to be aware that she was being put into that situation as well. That’s part of her role as the One of All Sacred: she’s aware. Which ups the ante with internal and external conflict, doesn’t it? How do you play the role of deity without being pigeonholed into the role of savior or superhero? That was one of Denni’s first pronouncements, even as she was entering Moulding Warehouse for the first time: she was a deity, but she was a human, just like everyone else there. Don’t expect miracles.

The role of the One of All Sacred within the Mendaihu Universe is that of overseer, really. They don’t necessarily have to change the world or make it a better place…their role is really just to make sure its problems don’t spiral out of control. The spirit of the One is resurrected every twenty to twenty-five years (roughly once a generation or so) to keep an eye on things, gauge where we are in our evolution, and make a few changes or tweaks if necessary.

Denni Johnson is the Ninth Embodiment on Earth. [There were many embodiments prior to Earth’s, both on Mannaka and Meraladh, but that’s another storyline entirely.] Right away she’d decided that instead of trying to play the expected role, she’d change it to something that made more sense to her. That in turn changed the expectations of all the parties involved. Her personal choices affected everyone else in the process. Instead of turning off Nehalé Usarai’s awakening ritual, she kept it going. She saw it as a way to start with a bit of a clean slate; no one was prepared for this move, so everyone’s on the same page and fumbling a bit, including her.

Giving her the awareness of her situation was quite the trick; in essence, she’s in a constant state of paying attention to what’s going on and having the ability to change events if necessary. She needed to be able to think on the fly, accept that she may make mistakes, and know when to let nature and/or fate take its course instead.

On a more spiritual level, I had to make sure that she wasn’t exactly seen as The Goddess That Is (an analog to the main gods and goddesses of current religions, and who pretty much runs — not rules — the known universes). The One is more of an Earth Goddess, the one in charge of the planet. The position has been held by all kinds of people; young, old, man, woman, Meraladian, Earther, and so on. Each Embodiment had their own strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures. What makes Denni different? Well…you’ll need to read the books to find out!

And then there’s Saisshalé.

As I’d said previously, there’s a yin-yang to everything in the Mendaihu Universe. Yes, even the Dearest One has an opposing force, one who embraces chaos just as the One of All Sacred embraces order. More about him on Friday.

A: When I came up with the Alien Relations Unit, I already had a plan that they would work very much like an extended family of sorts, very much like how a police station or a fire house would. I saw them as similar to the units from animes such as Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell (Chief Inspector Dylan Farraway was based on Chief Aramaki early on before I decided to make him a bit younger), and Bubblegum Crisis.

I also wanted a few characters who were involved in the story, but not as deeply as Caren and Alec. They would be a part of any investigations, they would react to situations very much the same way, but they were able to give everyone else a clearer point of view, thanks to their distance.

Q: Are they based on anyone in particular?

A: Not really; I really wanted to give them unique personalities separate from most of the other characters in the trilogy. Sheila is that one person in your circle of friends who’s loud and boisterous and fun and most likely the first to get into a scrap; Nick is the outsider who’s just recently joined the group and is still trying to figure out how to fit in. Both last names are Tuckerizations of 90s memories of mine: Kennedy is the former MTV veejay, and Slater is Christian Slater.

Q: What’s their background?

A: Sheila is from quite a large family, of which she’s the second youngest; her parents were also ARU agents (they knew Caren’s parents well), her older siblings (two brothers, three sisters) are agents either in the police or fire forces. Her little sister is training to be part of the Governor’s Special Forces Unit. She’s extremely proud of her family’s dedication to the city and is glad to be a part of it. She joined the Branden Hill ARU the same year that Caren did; they met during training and hit it off quickly. She and Caren had a brief and slightly awkward romantic relationship before they broke it off for professional reasons. They’re both still great friends.

Nick is an only child, and his parents live just south of Bridgetown at an outpost not that far from the outer B-Town hamlets across the Sachers River. He chose to become a cadet for the B-Town Metro Police and was assigned a position in South City Sector. He stayed there for about five years before requesting a transfer to the Branden Hill ARU. The reason for the change in unit is unknown at this time; he never revealed it to anyone, other than stating that he wanted to work closer with the Mendaihu. [Sheila seems to think it’s because he worked with them so often in South City that he’s created a tight connection.]

Q: Are either of them Mendaihu?

A: Sheila professes not to be, though she has very strong innerspeak and soulsensing abilities and could very easily be initiated if she so chose. She does not want to, however. She’s fine enough with being the ARU agent that she is.

Nick grew up with no psionic abilities whatsoever, and he doubts he’ll ever acquire them. To make up for his shortcomings, he’s trained himself to be an incredibly resourceful and quick-thinking profiler for the Unit.

Q: Anything else?

A: Sheila is fiercely loyal to her coworkers, friends and family. She always speaks her mind, and more than a few times she’s gotten written up by her superiors for her actions. Despite that, she’s still highly respected by them. She likes a physical connection, so will always be touching someone on the arm when talking to them. She loves to listen to music and always has something playing in the background, even if it’s a contraband radio in the patrol car she’s driving. She works out a few times a week and has a devastating right hook.

Nick is the only person who smokes as much as Alec does. He’s also a coffee fiend. He’s a few inches shorter than Sheila and she likes to tease him about that, as well as him being a Wilderlander (i.e., someone who grew up in the sticks). He looks up to Caren and Alec as mentors, even if he never comments on it, and he always appreciates their help and direction. He’s friendly with almost everyone he meets, but he’s also got a surprisingly short temper and a low tolerance for bullshit. He tends to play the straight man to Sheila’s wildness, sometimes to comedic effect.